Laura Majerus, In-house counsel at Google. Formerly a partner in the intellectual property group of Fenwick & West.
Expertise
Laura Majerus' practice concentrates on intellectual property protection and patent counseling in the areas of software, electrical and computer systems. She also counsels clients on Open Source licensing issues. Ms. Majerus is currently serving as the pro bono Director of Legal Affairs for the Open Source Initiative. She obtained her J.D. from the University of Iowa, with distinction, in 1987. She was awarded an MS, also from the University of Iowa in 1987 jointly with her law degree. She also has a B.S. in computer science form the same school. She is admitted to practice in California, Iowa and the District of Columbia.
Until the decision in Jacobsen vs. Katzer was issued Wednesday, it wasn't clear whether a court of law would regard an open source license as being capable of imposing enforceable copyright restrictions on the use of computer code.
"It's a fantastic win. Bob Jacobsen and I are very pleased with this result," declared Victoria Hall in an e-mail toInformationWeek. Hall represented Jacobsen in the case. "For non-geeks, this won't seem important. But trust me, this is huge," wrote Lessig on his blog Wednesday.
Open source licenses, particularly the GPL from the Free Software Foundation, reverse the established doctrine of copyright. They give away the right to use code, provided you abide by their provisions to make any changes available to other users. The opposite case, where you do not have the right to use material without paying for it, has a rich body of copyright case law. The open source licenses do not, and it has not been clear how the courts would decide the issue once it came before them.
The first decision in U.S. District Court for Northern California last Aug. 17 went against open source advocates. Jacobsen, a creator of open source model railroad control software, had been billed by Matthew Katzer, a commercial seller of similar code, for each free download that Jacobsen's project had allowed. The bill came to $203,000. Jacobsen, sued for a declaratory judgment that his open source code did not infringe Katzer's company's code.
The lower court ruled that the provisions of the Artistic License didn't protect Jacobsen. It was a stunning setback for all open source licenses and opened other projects to potential challenge. The Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision Wednesday and sent it back to the district court.